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February 04, 2000
Golden House hates us, and I get my very own planet!
We're just going to have to find a new Chinese take-out place.
I'm usually a doormat, as far as bad service goes. If a salesperson is rude to me, I'll accept it, telling myself, "Well, he's had a bad day or something." Bad service in a restaurant? I don't complain. The waitress could spit in my water glass and I wouldn't say a word. Barry, on the other hand, doesn't take any crap. He's not mean, and he's not a "difficult" customer by any means, but if you treat him shabbily, he will let you know.
We've been ordering from one particular Chinese take-out place for a couple of years. We order in maybe twice a month, so the owner of the restaurant was beginning to recognize our voices. They're cheap, the food is decent, and they usually aren't busy, so the deliveries are quick. It's when they ARE busy that we have a problem.
Last night, we both got home late, and were tired and crabby, so we didn't want to cook. Chinese food sounded like heaven, so I called and ordered. the woman told me she was very busy, so it would be around 40 minutes. Now, last time this happened, I called and cancelled the order after an hour and a half. The time before that, when the woman warned us they were busy, it took two hours for the food to arrive. (Barry wasn't home, so I meekly took the food when it was delivered ice-cold, paid the bill, and tipped the driver. Doormat.) Last night, though, I called back after waiting an hour, and was told the food was on its way and would be there in five minutes. 25 minutes later, Barry called. The owner was rude to him, told him the food would get there whenever it got there, and she was busy, so it wasn't her problem. He told her fine, but we weren't paying for it. She said "Okay, okay, whatever," and hung up on him. (She was shouting loudly enough that I could hear her across the room.) Another 20 minutes later, the driver showed up with a very well-chilled bag of food. We tipped him, but told him we weren't paying for the order because it had been almost two hours.
This is where it gets weird. We ate, and Barry went online for about two hours. Then he went to bed, and I got online. We don't have two phone lines, so when we're online, we don't get phone calls. I had been surfing for about half an hour when I got disconnected, and the phone rang. The owner of the Chinese place must have been sitting by the phone all evening trying to call us. I answered and she started yelling at me, telling me that Barry had never said we weren't paying for the food, and she didn't care how long it had taken. Barry got on the phone and she shouted at him for a while, telling him that he should be glad the food was delivered at all. He was nice about it, for a while, then eventually he just hung up on her. (She was yelling about how we shouldn't expect good service because their prices were so low. No, really, that's what she said. Very impressive, along with calling late at night to yell at unhappy customers...)
On a much happier note, I won two little glass planets from The Infinity Project! I heard about it from Patrick, and thought it sounded really cool. So I spent part of my sick day Wednesday looking for the little icon to click on to enter (visit the web page, and that will make sense. Enter, too -- it's really a cool idea.) Patrick actually explained the project better than I can -- basically, Josh Simpson is a glass blower. He makes, among other things, glass planets. Apparently, he likes to hide them -- he goes around his hometown and puts them in peoples' flower pots and such. The Infinity Project is a contest -- you send him an email telling him where you would hide a planet, and why, and twice a week he chooses a winner and sends them two little glass planets, one to keep and one to hide. And I won! I had been planning to try to hide one in or near the house that burned down, but I'm not entirely sure that will be possible. So Patrick and I are discussing having a planet-hiding expedition in Boston.
And I'm still thinking about favorite books from childhood, so email me and tell me which books you loved.
Posted by Mary Ellen at February 4, 2000 06:28 PM